For the first time in
her life Mrs. Bill Hay knew what it was to hold the undivided attention
of army society, for every woman at Fort Frayne was wild to know all
about the beautiful newcomer, and only one could tell.
Hay, the trader, had prospered in his long years on the frontier, first
as trader among the Sioux, later as sutler, and finally, when Congress
abolished that title, substituting therefore the euphemism, without
material clog upon the perquisites, as post trader at Fort Frayne. No
one knew how much he was worth, for while apparently a most
open-hearted, whole-souled fellow, Hay was reticence itself when his
fortunes or his family were matters of question or comment. He had long
been married, and Mrs. Hay, when at the post, was a social
sphinx,--kind-hearted, charitable, lavish to the soldiers' wives and
children, and devotion itself to the families of the officers when
sickness and trouble came, as come in the old days they too often did.
It was she who took poor Ned Robinson's young widow and infant all the
way to Cheyenne when the Sioux butchered the luckless little hunting
party down by Laramie Peak. It was she who nursed Captain Forrest's wife
and daughter through ten weeks of typhoid, and, with her own means, sent
them to the seashore, while the husband and father was far up on the
Yellowstone, cut off from all communication in the big campaign of '76.
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